The popularity of personal computers has made service and support for such computers critical to ensure consumers' efficient use of the computers. Further, because computer designs are so similar, service and support programs also serve to differentiate different manufacturers of the computers. A superior service and support program may well be the difference between mediocre and superior personal computer sales.
However, even though a good service and support-system is important to a computer manufacturer, such a program is difficult and expensive to maintain because of the complexity of today's computer systems and related components, the lack of technical expertise at the user end and the difficulty of solving technical computer problems from a remote location. Part of the difficulty also arises from the "open architecture" of a typical personal computer. Such an open architecture allows many different manufacturers to produce hardware components and software applications for a consumer's personal computer. The combination of specific hardware and software residing on, or operating within, a computer system is referred to as the particular "configuration" of that computer system. Because several different hardware and software manufacturers contribute to any particular configuration, it is difficult for a single manufacturer to provide adequate support for all of the components in the configuration. Also, a given configuration will likely change every few months, or so, as the user purchases new or upgraded hardware and software components.
Despite the difficulty in providing a single source of support for a user's configuration, the user has a very strong expectation of being able to go to the original equipment manufacturer (known as an "OEM," i.e., the manufacturer or assembler of the basic computer components initially shipped together as a "system," typically including the motherboard and housing, hard disk, monitor, operating system software, and bundled applications) for solutions to any problems that the user experiences with the configuration. The user is disappointed if such a service is not provided.
Today's typical support programs allow a user to contact a Customer Service Center staffed and run by the OEM of the user's computer. The contact is usually by telephone. Often the user can use the Internet, modem, or other means to obtain digital information or components such as an updated "patch" to fix a software problem, or instructional text on how to solve a problem.
However, these methods of communication and information access provided by a typical support program do not provide adequate help to the user for various reasons.
One reason that traditional support methods fall short is that in order to diagnose properly a user's computer system problems, a customer service representative in a remote location needs to obtain detailed and accurate information about the user's configuration. Often this is complicated because there is no standard way for hardware or software component manufacturers to identify products, to describe them, or to implement product interfaces.
Also, a personal computer user is generally not a technical person. In this respect, it is difficult for the customer service representative at a remote location to obtain the proper information from the user, or to get the user to perform tasks on the computer system that are necessary in order to fix a problem with the computer. Even if the user is technically trained, it is often difficult to communicate adequately with the user over standard communication devices such as the telephone, fax machine, mail correspondence, etc. Yet other problems exist with typical online service and support practices today. For example, companies will often provide "patches" on the Internet or World Wide Web (WWW or WEB) which the user must download and install in order to fix problems on the computer. This process is often time consuming and is usually handled by having the user end the conversation with the customer service representative, perform the download, install the patch, test out the software, and call the customer service representative back, if necessary. Because Customer Service Centers are notoriously overloaded, obtaining another session with a customer service representative may be frustrating and may require a considerable amount of time.
Thus, it is desirable to provide an online service and support system for improved support, diagnosis, and servicing of remotely located personal computers.